ISSOUDUN, July 14, 2009 (AFP) – Tour de France contenders Saxo Bank suffered a blow Tuesday when road captain Kurt-Asle Arvesen was forced out of the race after suffering a broken collarbone in a heavy crash during the 10th stage.

The 34-year-old Norwegian champion, who won the 11th stage on last year’s Tour, fell after 87km trying to avoid a spectator who had fallen into the road.

Saxo Bank spokesman Bryan Nygaard confirmed to AFP: “He’s out of the race.

We’ve just returned from hospital where scans confirmed the suspected fracture. It’s fractured in two places.”

Arvesen rode on and was in obvious pain as the race’s official doctors tried to ascertain exactly how serious his injury was.

The loss of Arvesen is a big blow to Saxo Bank, who were called CSC last year when the Norwegian played his role in helping former team leader Carlos Sastre win the race.

This year Arvesen came to the Tour as the newly-crowned Norwegian champion and primed to peak for the crucial third week of the race which features key climbing stages and an individual time trial.

Nygaard added: “It’s a big blow to team Saxo Bank. He was our team captain and was the man to organsie tactics. He came here peaking perfectly so obviously he’s gutted. It was his big objective of the season.”

Andy Schleck, whom Saxo Bank are hoping to lead towards the yellow jersey next week, said: He is one of the most important riders in the team, he was one of the captains who took important decisions.

“Now we are without him, there is not much else you can say. Crashes happen and sometimes you break things, he was unlucky today.”

His older brother Frank Schleck said: “It’s a big hit for us to lose Kurt.
It’s going to hurt us for the race, not just losing a friend after ten days, that is a real bummer.”

With Tour organisers having banned radio communication between riders and team managers both for today’s race and Friday’s stage, Jens Voigt said the lack of information played only a minor role in the drama.

“A motorbike hit a spectator who fell into the road, another rider went across his (Arvesen’s) wheel and he crashed,” said Voigt.

“It was one of those things you can’t foresee – the chaos was there.

“The only bad thing was that it took us ten minutes to find out he had crashed and that was by someone in another team.

“With a radio we would have known that straight away, what happened, if he’s good, if he’s bad and whether he will come back into the peloton.”

Photo by: CorVos Pro